William C.C. Claiborne

William Charles Cole Claiborne (1773-23 November 1817) was Governor of Louisiana from 20 December 1803 to 16 December 1816, succeeding Pierre Clement de Laussat and preceding Jacques Villere. Claiborne, originally a Tennessee politician, governed the Mississippi Territory from 1801 to 1803, the Territory of Orleans from 1803 to 1812, Louisiana from 1812 to 1816, and served as Senator from Louisiana for a few months in 1817, serving as a Democratic-Republican Party member.

Biography
William Charles Cole Claiborne was born in Sussex County, Virginia in 1773, and he became a lawyer in Tennessee in 1794 after graduating from the College of William & Mary. In 1796, he was elected to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and he was elected to the US House of Representatives on 23 November 1797, succeeding Andrew Jackson. In 1801, William Dickson succeeded him in the House, and he served as Governor of the Mississippi Territory from 1803 to 1803 and of the Territory of Orleans from 1803 to 1812, ironing out differences with the local Native American tribes. In 1810, Claiborne annexed the Republic of West Florida into the United States on the orders of President James Madison, and he put down a slave uprising on the "German Coast" of Louisiana in 1811. In 1812, he defeated Jacques Villere in the gubernatorial election with 70% of the vote, and he served as the first Governor of Louisiana after statehood. In 1817, he was elected to the US Senate, but he died of a liver ailment that same year.